As a workshop developer for a Welsh project called Technocamps, I spend my working life trying to encourage young people and teachers into computing nad computing careers. So imagine my utter joy when I hear that ICT in schools will be replaced by computer science. My initial reaction: YIPEEEEEEEE.
Then FEAR. Who is going to teach this? A high majority of our future computer science teachers do not come from a computing background, let alone an ICT background. According to the general teaching council of the 28,000 who became teachers in 2010, only THREE had a computing related degree.
Before I started work on the Technocamps project I did my PhD looking at why there aren’t enough women in computing and then did my postdoc looking at something similar. I published papers, researched and was seen as some sort of expert in the area of getting kids into computing. However, I had only been seeing things from one aspect. I did not realize the amount of support and encouragement that schools will need to teach a computer science curriculum. Schools which I had observed, have issues with the current ICT Curriculum.
In order for this reform to work we need to upskill teachers, not a one day training course or a light evening session, they need consistent support. It takes computer science graduates three years to be experts in the subject computer science, teachers need a similar type of training. We need to remember that computing is not as easy as ICT and therefore need to make sure we do not put young people of by having unskilled teachers.
When computers were first introduced into secondary schools, teachers did not know what to do with them and a lot of money was pumped into teacher training and equipment. This training was a session on computers, however this was not enough to increase their confidence in teaching computers. Young people know more about computers than teachers and are able to tell if the teacher is not confident in teaching a subject, which is why its important the right training and support is given.
I am really glad that we are looking up and taking an interest in IT education, however I hope it isn’t a one off speech and I hope that thought has been given about the consequences in terms of the quality of education out young people receive.
[updated 11th January 2013, 16:07 – minor grammar issues!]
Geek IS the new Chic 
You have a good point, but do teachers really need to be trained to degree-level computer science to teach secondary school students? If the content’s going to be engaging, it needs to be relatively simple anyway.
We’re not talking computer architecture and variable types here – at secondary school, they just need to concepts to get them interested. They can learn the formalities when they get to university (or in their own time, as I’m sure most computer science students started!).
I think the best way to facilitate this is to get the students to teach each other. There’s always a few in a class who just ‘get it’, and will often help their class mates anyway. Why not formalise this?
I agree 90% of what you have said in this article. The only thing I would disagree with is the need for teachers to have a full degree level knowledge of the subject, they need the bare bones (programming and architecture for dummies). This can be taught in a year (intense) or up to two years (part time).
Coming from a background of a computer science degree and someone who chose to do his PGCE in ICT, I have witnessed recently first hand about what ICT in education is like.
Putting it all bluntly, three quarters of the way through my PGCE I knew what I was teaching was how to be a glorified secretary. Even though I completed my PGCE, the pro’s of “making a difference” was quickly swamped with boredom about teaching KS3 and KS4, how to make a PowerPoint presentation. Now, I am doing a PhD and a lot happier that work I am doing is actually challenging.
So, Michael Gove’s announcement today about transforming the ICT curriculum is welcome personally and long overdue. Personally, I am skeptical whether or not he can pull it off. Intensive training is needed and can you imagine people working in the public sector (i.e. teachers) being prepared to accept retraining. Working on the base case assumption that 80% (probably more like 95%) of ICT teachers cannot program, it is a lot of opposition/resistant to get around.
I think its a case of wait and see then to see if anything gets actually changed. Personally, I would like to see ICT scrapped completely year 7 to 9 and turned into a KS4 and KS5 subject like Business Studies. With the emphasis on ICT across the curriculum as a key skill, why do we need to teach Office to 11-14 year olds? Then GCSE IT (or comp sci) would have its own remit without students thinking that we will do ICT because its easy and we don’t have to do anything challenging. GCSE IT can get the reputation of being a difficult but rewarding mentally as well as progress wise without the “how to be a secretary” shackles it currently has holding it down.
Ideal solution would be if we could get volunteers from industry / academia in to teach the classes. With the right enthusiastic people it could probably work very well. Still, it’s going to be difficult / impractical to get one for every school in the country.
I was with Mike Hurst on the PGCE(Hence how I found this article) and actually went to teach in FE.
Out of 5 teachers in our IT department – only 2 of us can code. Coding is not something that is done easily, and somebody with a good grasp of Maths would find it easier than somebody with some bogus IT degree.
I want to see Computing(not IT – what does IT even mean and does it actually include computers?) being taught alongside Entrepreneurship skills(hats off to Peter Jones for starting a college for this).
Currently we’re wasting tax payers money on Shoreditch, where companies like last.fm are losing money but don’t know why(See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/09/lastfm_accounts/) With the correct education system we could once again be running the world.
You need to allocate teachers + time to this venture. Most pupils are lucky to get 1 hour a fortnight of IT. This equates to around 45hours over 3 years(based on 1hour a fortnight over 30 weeks a year). I think this needs to be increased before we can even think about teaching anything complex.
Technocamps was an awesome idea by Microsoft. This is the way forward for teaching computing in schools.
Without a word of a lie I sent an email to department of education on the weekend and this comes out 3 days later on the news. I think it’s a coincidence.
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I totally agree with this article